Dark Harvest

The experience of reading this story can be summarized as, “Wait, what?”

I have to give Partridge points for sheer ridiculous audacity. He takes an unexpected point of view and unapologetically plunges ahead with it. The story is distinctive and intriguing in many ways.

However, it's also highly variable in quality. I guess this has the merit of being the least-horrible use of second-person narration I've encountered? The writing throughout had me similarly ambivalent: just as I was musing on an inventive plot point, a howlingly bad simile would yank me out of the story. Just as I was getting interested in a character, a cardboard cutout would caper into frame and ruin the mood. Worst of all, just as I was getting invested in the lore behind the tale, it petered out. Horror benefits when an author avoids overexplaining, but this suffers from a clear case of underexplaining. For me, this needed an eventual reveal that would give us a picture (however fuzzy) of how this cycle got started and what was at stake.

This is short and economical, so if it sounds intriguing, definitely give it a shot. It was imperfect but entertaining.